Giving Constructive Feedback

Say it about the behaviour and the effect, at a moment when there is something to do about it, and then stop talking so she can respond.

A workable shape: name the specific thing you observed, say what it probably causes, and ask what she makes of it. In the practice interview, most answers were about what the team did rather than what you did, and an interviewer may hear that as not having done it yourself. Does that match how it felt to you.

What that avoids is the sandwich, which everyone recognises and therefore discounts. Once someone learns that praise arrives before criticism, the praise stops being heard as praise.

One thing to check first. Some of what reads as a communication problem is a cultural convention about not claiming individual credit, and telling her to talk about herself may be asking her to do something that feels wrong. Naming that openly, and treating it as a local convention she can choose to use rather than a fault to correct, usually goes better.

The four interviews with no result is the part I would want to know more about. In our service we assumed a similar pattern was about how a woman presented, and it turned out two of the employers had never called her back at all.

That is an important correction and it belongs in the first answer. Before giving feedback on performance, find out what actually happened at each stage. No call back after an application is not interview performance. Being asked about a gap in a work history, or about a name, or about a headscarf, is not interview performance either.

Discrimination is part of this picture and it should not be quietly converted into personal development. If four employers behaved the same way, the honest conversation includes that possibility, and it includes telling her what routes exist if she wants to raise it.

The practical order: establish the facts of each attempt, separate what she controls from what she does not, give feedback only on the first part, and be explicit that you are doing so. Otherwise a mentee learns that the system is fair and she is the problem, which is both untrue and demoralising.